I was speaking recently to the general manager of a $9 billion service subsidiary of a Fortune 50 manufacturing company, and I asked him the question in the headline of this post. He thought about it, and said “I’m not sure why that’s the case. We’ve always looked at service in such a blue collar way. Clipboards and sneaker nets. And yet our service engineers carry our brand to our customers more than any other group of employees.”

Let’s face it: For the most part customer service really does suck. Especially for consumers. Automated phone systems, press this button for self-service, etc. It’s horrible. For many companies, the goal is cutting costs from the service department, which has typically been a profit drain. These companies slash costs by eliminating personal interaction, using consolidations of call centers, call deflection technology, robotic implementations of call scripting and workforce optimization tools. Get off the call, get out of the client site, move on to the next appointment as quickly as possible! The result is a reduction in the amount of time their people spend in direct personal contact with customers. It’s a short-term means of saving money, but is it truly profitable in the long run?

A large office products company I spoke with implemented a workforce optimization tool designed to squeeze another half of a service call per day out of each of the company’s 2,000 field technicians. He was moaning that it was an abject disaster. Customer satisfaction plunged to the lowest levels in history as the company abandoned the intimate customer relationships their service engineers had built up over decades. With customer satisfaction goes customer loyalty, and soon customers are defecting to competitors. Costs are lower, but consumers are disgruntled and revenue takes a beating.

It’s time to change all of this. We as customers want it, and it makes perfect business sense!

“There’s a tendency to see service as a sunk cost – the customer is reaching out to you. So people say, ‘It’s a cost. Let’s look to eliminate it.’ Every one of those moments of truth is an opportunity to make a difference to customers in a personalized way. For a promoter who is positive on American Express, we see a 10% to 15% increase in spending and four to five times increased retention.”

I recently had a horribly comical experience with my satellite radio provider. I had a couple of simple requests. After fruitless chases down the rabbit hole of automated attendants, followed by robotic interactions with three clueless customer service representatives, I have now decided I’m going to terminate my subscriptions and just listen to Pandora in my car. The amusing thing: I could have easily been upsold or extended on my current contract!

Another company I met with is implementing a different strategy – they’re leveraging technology not to eliminate personal customer contact, but to strengthen it. They’ve armed their team of 1,000 service engineers with iPads loaded with cloud-based mobile field service management apps, product manuals, instructional videos and social enterprise technology. Technicians are encouraged to interact with their customers, and collaborate with their peers in the interest of exceeding customer expectations and generating additional service revenue. The incremental revenue generated (millions annually) is expected to far outweigh the initial technology investment and the entire organization is enthusiastic about it.

These stories underscore that the human element generates meaningful, memorable customer experiences that lead to loyalty and increased revenue. Technology is at the crux of both of these examples, but it’s not the technology that more efficiently fixes customer problems, instead it is the engine that empowers the people that solve them. That’s the key distinction and realization that separates the decent service organizations from the great ones.

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Businesses are far too often mistakenly focused on the wrong metrics to understand the significance of improving the customer experience. I am all for efficiency, but when it comes to customer service that needs to start with truly empowering team members who are facing the customer, especially today with the wealth of data companies have on their customers.

There is some great discussion around this right now on the CIO Collaboration Network (j.mp/CIOcolab).

This rings so true. Even as call center automation has skyrocketed, customer satisfaction with call centers has plummeted. “Touch one to get lost.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard executives look at their latest CRM, call-center, or online technology and ask “how can we use this new technology to sell more stuff for less cost?” But the right question to ask is:

“How can we use this technology to deliver more value to customers?” How can the technology make the product cheaper, more convenient, better fitting, more capable… If you do that, guess what? You’ll sell more stuff and your costs will go down, too!

I certainly respect Don Peppers’ perspective, but you have to read into his words to help understand that a balance is required, while the author’s article will lead you to believe that customers want to eliminate all technology associated with call centers.

I can prove otherwise. A well thought out self service offering designed with the customer’s experience at the forefront can be appreciated over a human customer service representative. I have implemented self service applications in a proof of concept mode, only to have the customers loudly demand that we reinstate the apps when we shut them down because they saved the customer time.

The author taking a perspective that technology is bad unless it increases the amount of face time is just as wrong as having one that eliminating customer face time is a good direction.

It’s all about balance, and in business just as in government, understanding how to balance is what sets the best apart from the rest.

Funny that the author mentions Apple’s face time customer experience being excellent when Apple ranks quite low competitively with their call center support and sinks in its ratings each quarter. Why? Same reason as other organizations – their management chain responsible for that part of the business is not as sharp as Ron Johnson, former Apple Store guru. Call center management is all too often under-educated, lacking broad business experience and under-paid.

When companies start aligning call centers with managers that have cross business process experience and paying them north of $200,000/yr, perhaps we’ll see some improvement.

Kyle, you’re spot on. I don’t think for an instant that a human is always better than a machine. If that were true, we wouldn’t have ATMs, and we’d all still be queuing up to get our cash from a minimum-wage teller.

My problem isn’t with technology, but with the mindset that gives cost-cutting so much more priority than improving customer service. I’ve had GREAT experiences with automated call-center technology, but only when it is really designed to meet customer needs, and not the company’s need for reduced labor costs.

Kyle, you’re spot on. I don’t think for an instant that a human is always better than a machine. If that were true, we wouldn’t have ATMs, and we’d all still be queuing up to get our cash from surly, minimum-wage tellers.

My problem isn’t with technology, but with the mindset that gives cost-cutting so much more priority than improving customer service. I’ve had GREAT experiences with automated call-center technology, but only when the company using it really tries to meet the customer’s needs, and rather than the company’s need for reduced labor costs.

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This guy has smacked it out of the park. I have worked in call centers for the last 20 years. In two fortune 500 companies. They have taken a very very ugly turn. You have a TON of managers, directors & VP’s that are “yes” people. They kiss each others butt so it’s hard to get truth from meetings.

The management is being handed over to mostly scornful women leaders who enjoy the power they have at work due to being powerless at home. They then attract others like themselves and grows into these vicious cliques that destroy business and stress the work force out so much, by the time they are picking up that phone they could care less about any client they have on the phone.

These people would come up with childish things like putting balloons at our desk or cutting footballs out of construction paper and putting your name on a paper football if you sold something. They treated people like preschool children and never like adults. They do this and try to act like it’s fun….it’s demeaning. I’m 30 and don’t want to be treated like your kid. There is no dignity or respect in call centers for lower level individuals. We often times were given goals that were ridiculous.

You put an executive under the scrutiny these people are and they would fold.

People who rose to the top were ass kissers who just were on someone’s good side. They say things. like…..that presentation you gave was so inspirational. Or they ask questions to leaders like. What keeps you up at night? Everyone around them says….good question….even though it’s been answered a million times.

Take a look at a call center org chart I bet you will see over 60% are women with almost no men at the management chain. I notice that men in higher positions will often times even “identify” these women who want nothing more than to spend their entire life at the center because of life not being so great at home. They are often patted on the head by upper management for the long unhealthy hours.

There are no checks & balances and they create these little empires that eventually are made up of some seriously disturbing people. If you ever see someone has worked at a call center for over 10 years….and who is a MALE….They may be willing to tell you the truth about the work atmosphere in these places.

I am now creating a call center for a company that will turn this industry upside-down on it’s head. Balanced employees will be hired. Each applicant who qualifies will get a 1/2 an hour minimal to prove they deserve employment. Well rounded men & women who know how to balance life and work will be employed.

We will insure that what I described never happens. Call centers used to be a place where you would put your future exec’s in these positions to expose them to the business and hopefully keep it in mind as they rose within the company. Now they are unhealthy breeding grounds for people who actually hate people or the very unhappy reps are over stressed on their goals & environment. Hence the customer service SUCKS!!!

This can also be traced back to companies arming themselves with pathetic examples of HR departments (also a breeding ground for unhealthy women), no proper interviewing by leadership & hiring people they don’t trust or know in the first place.

Turnaround is fierce and the culture the call centers create are infantile and warped. You want to stop it as a leader. Create checks & balances and never allow someone to stay a call center manager or exec for more than two years in the same position.

Insure you culture is balanced & diverse with different personalities in leadership.

Allowing leadership surveys that will not be traced back to reps. Often times we were surveyed but our company id was associated with the survey insuring they never got answers they did not want to hear. Wake up America. Be accountable and treat each other like you want to be treated.

Before I get the comments. I understand it’s not popular to call out minorities. I am a minority and it’s time we ALL step it up! You shouldn’t be offended if you’re not guilty of the behavior.

This article is dead on the money, and has applicability even beyond the Customer Service issue.

During the economic downturn, many American companies slashed their legal budgets relating to protecting their Intellectual Property against infringers. Their theory was that it was a “cost center” that they could afford to live without. Fast forward a few years, and the number of fake products is through the roof, and most American companies are woefully unprepared to do anything about it, having let competitors get patents, and rip them off for years.

Awesome! This seriously is a problem in America right now. I know the customer is not always right but if you tactfully speak to the company they should at least be respectful and professional back.

Just had this horrible run in with Avanset’s Customer Service. Freaking ridiculous! _________________________________________________________________ 1st email back to me. Hi,

You bought monthly subscription from us and subscriptions are recurring you can cancel it from your account, by uploading cancellation form. if you want to cancel your monthly subscription before 3 months you can cancel it by paying cancellation fee which is 59.99$, its mentioned on the web site see this http://www.avanset.com/support.html And after 3 months use you can cancel it free by uploading cancellation form.

Please feel free to contact us in case of further queries. Regards, Alexander _________________________________________________________________ 2nd. hi,

This is company policy and you will need to follow it.

Please feel free to contact us in case of further queries. Regards, Alexander